Venturi Mini in-car FM music streamer
Handy, helpful little hi-fi add-on
Review This is one of those gadgets that doesn't really fit into any pre-existing category largely due to it actually being three things in one: a standalone hands-free phone device, an RDS FM music streamer and, by way of its USB port, a charger.
Out of the box, the Venturi is about the size of an average candybar mobile phone, albeit one with a 30° kink in the middle and a 12V in-car power take-off stuck up its bottom.
Venturi Mini: comes with bright and clear OLED screen
The review unit we received was all black and while it's handsome enough, we do prefer the look of the brushed metal version shown plugged into the dash of a Porsche Boxster on the Venturi Mini website.
Arrayed across the front panel of the Venturi is a small but commendably bright and clear OLED screen, a microphone, the main scroll wheel control, and four backlit touch buttons that manage incoming calls and music playback. All four require only the gentlest of pushes to activate, though the scroll wheel was a little on the stiff side.
On the right-hand side of the unit is an on/off switch and a full-size USB port, while on the left there are 3.5mm audio in and out sockets, the latter allowing for a hard connection to any car stereo with a suitable input port. There's also a button to select FM frequency. All in all, this little device fits a lot of controls and sockets into a remarkably small space and they all work reasonably well.
COMMENTS
Missed a few tricks
They went so far as to put a USB charger in, but no mass storage access? - that I can see mentioned on their site anyhow.
And the phone book doesn't work on Nokias.
Maybe these will appear on the Venturi (Maxi|Nano|Shuffle|Micro|Touch|v2)
@Myself - it does tell you what song is playing, it has a fair amount of info on their site
So, the RDS then...
Does AVRCP or A2DP provide the name of the content being played, and does the gizmo then forward that over RDS to the head unit? Or did they use an RDS-capable transmitter solely so they could say "Hello Venturi"?
umm... nice toy, but...
too many functions for me. my phone does well with the handsfree stuff by itself. and for an FM transmitting media streamer... the line out port is nice, but if you're getting it to hook up something like an Ipod to a stereo that has an Aux input, there are adapters that are much cheaper than this... and for those with stereos without Aux inputs, the FM transmitter is nice... but I already have a Mach Speed that works pretty good (dunno if it's the old stock radio it's being used with or the device itself), but the volume could be a little higher on it. but for $20(~£10) it works great. and that's a far cry from $160(£80).
I'm sure there's a market for it, niche as it may be, though.
DUH!
I didn't fink of dat one!
Now I go beat head wiv rock.
Just spotted the actual price (£80) too. Mis-read it earlier as £13 ('s not been a good day today!!). F**k that! Commitment to buy recinded.
PS. There's not really any suitable free space on my dash for ANYTHING, hence the earlier comment (DUH)
Hope my brain's back in service (well, more than today anyway) tomorrow.
If your "cigar lighter" socket's inconvenient...
...you can buy a socket extender from more-or-less any car parts place that will put a socket where you _do_ want it!
